Literary Theory and Criticism

The Call of the Wild is a fabulous version of the young adult adventure story (including brave animals, Indians, a contest, etc.), and it is also a sophisticated exploration of the roles of Nature in shaping destiny in a naturalistic,… Read More ›

Analysis of Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep

Henry Roth’s autobiographical first novel Call It Sleep (1934) has come to be recognized as one of the most poignant and honest depictions of immigrant, specifically Jewish immigrant, life in all of American literature. Its account of living conditions in… Read More ›

Analysis of Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny

The Caine Mutiny is a military novel in the manner of Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens. It offers a formal view of military life from the perspectives of officers who, for the most part, are committed to that… Read More ›

Analysis of Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones

Set in Brooklyn during the 1930s and 1940s, Brown Girl, Brownstones is Paule Marshall’s first novel. Following the classic structure of a bildungsroman, it recounts the story of Selina Boyce, the daughter of Barbadian immigrants, from age 11 to 20…. Read More ›

Analysis of Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City

Along with Tama Janowitz’s Slaves of New York and Bret Easton Ellis’s Less than Zero, Jay McInerney’s first novel, Bright Lights, Big City, explores and details the frenetic club life and drug scene of mid-1980s New York. Bright Lights, Big… Read More ›

Analysis of Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey

An immediate national and international best-seller that was also well received by critics, The Bridge of San Luis Rey earned Thornton Wilder his first Pulitzer Prize. (He is still the only writer to win Pulitzer Prizes in both fiction and… Read More ›

Analysis of E. L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel

E. L. Doctorow’s 1971 novel focuses on Daniel Isaacson, the disturbed son of parents executed for giving the secret of the atomic bomb to the USSR. While working on his Ph.D. in the late 1960s, Daniel tries to reconcile what… Read More ›

Analysis of Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers

According to Louise Levitas Henriksen, Anzia Yezierska’s daughter, Doubleday celebrated the publication of Bread Givers in 1925 with an advance printing of 500 numbered copies of the book to be presented to “important people” and a garden party in honor… Read More ›

Analysis of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities

Tom Wolfe’s first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, was published in 1987 to widespread critical and popular acclaim. Only days after its release, the dizzying pace and boundless decadence of 1980s Wall Street so enjoyed by the novel’s protagonist,… Read More ›

Analysis of Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone

Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone revolves around the tragic suicide of a daughter of a San Francisco Chinatown family and the personal, cultural, and social questions this event forces the characters to negotiate. Leila Leong, Mah’s daughter from her first marriage,… Read More ›

Analysis of Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Blu’s Hanging

Upon its publication, Blu’s Hanging met with immediate critical acclaim. Critics considered the book “powerful,” “brilliant,” and “mesmerizing.” But when Blu’s Hanging was chosen as the Best Book of Asian American fiction of the year by a panel of judges… Read More ›

Analysis of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian is nightmarish, yet so hypnotically written, displaying such a wild and profound command of the language that the critic Harold Bloom, among others, has declared it one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, and perhaps the… Read More ›

Analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on January 30, 2026

The Blithedale Romance (1852) was the third of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s four major American romances, after The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851). Unique among Hawthorne’s novels, it is the only one to feature a first-person… Read More ›

Analysis of Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Última

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on January 29, 2026

Second recipient of the Quinto Sol Prize in 1971, this novel opened a new era for Chicano letters. Quinto Sol Publications established an annual prize for Chicano writers to promote their works in mainstream literature and, a year after Tomás… Read More ›

Analysis of Gertrude Atherton’s Black Oxen

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on January 29, 2026

Black Oxen (1923) simultaneously earned critical acclaim and prompted scorn and shock. Called drama, romance, and science fiction in its 1924 film release from Frank Lloyd Productions, the book went into 14 printings in a single year. The film’s popular… Read More ›

Analysis of Richard Wright’s Black Boy

Black Boy, the first book-length installment of Richard Wright’s novelistic autobiography, was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, the second of Wright’s works to be so recognized, the other being his enormously popular and important first novel Native Son (1940). In Black… Read More ›

Analysis of Howard Norman’s The Bird Artist

The Bird Artist, Howard Norman’s second novel, is the story of a man struggling to come to terms with his own identity. The novel’s narrator, Fabian Vas, strives to integrate two very disparate parts of his sense of self; he… Read More ›

Analysis of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor

Herman Melville began writing the manuscript that became Billy Budd, Sailor in 1886 near the end of his life. Although distinct parallels exist between the story and the historic Somers mutiny of 1842, in which Melville’s cousin was involved as… Read More ›

Analysis of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

Many readers wrongly consider Raymond Chandler’s novels to be mere detective stories. The subtle nuances that mimic harsh reality in the plotlines and characterizations, however, help elevate Chandler’s work beyond the genre. This gritty realism could, in part, be a… Read More ›

Analysis of Hilda Doolittle’s Bid Me to Live